Holding The Door Open For Women

Is It Wrong To Hold The Door Open For A Woman?

Here's the scenario: you're walking toward a doorway at roughly the same pace as another person and you both get there at the same time. What do you do? Oh wait, did I mention that the other person is a woman?

OK, now what do you do?

The answer to that question may once have seemed obvious, but in recent years the discussion has come up of whether or not a man opening a door for a woman is a form of benevolent sexism. The idea being that you are implicitly suggesting that the person you are holding the door for is inferior to you or dependent on your help in some way.

The study, which was conducted by Purdue University psychologists Megan McCarty and Janice Kelly and published in the journal Social Influence, concluded that a man who has had the door held for him by another man experiences negative effects on his self-esteem and confidence.

The study itself was staged by having a male member of the research team walk alongside a random person, either male or female, toward the entrance of a building on a university campus. The entrance to the building was two outward-opening doors next to each other. For half of the unknowing participants, the male researcher "took a step in front of the participant, opened the door, and let the participant walk through the door first." For the other half, the male researcher would open the adjacent door and walk through at roughly the same time as the participant. Once inside the building, the participant was immediately approached by a female research associate and asked to complete a survey that measured self-esteem. On a scale of one to ten, participants answered questions such as "I feel that I'm a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others" and "I can usually achieve what I want if I work hard for it."

The abstract of the study summarized the results of the experiment: "males who had the door held for them...by a male confederate reported lower self-esteem and self-efficacy than males who did not have the door held for them. Females were unaffected by door-holding condition.These results demonstrate negative consequences of seemingly innocuous but unexpected helping behavior that violates gender norms."

The sexes of both the door-opener and the survey-taker seem relevant to the results of the experiment in this case (what would change if the door-opener had been female and the survey-taker male, for example?). Not only that, but it can't be assumed that the answers to the questions about self-esteem were necessarily directly influenced by the door-opening gesture that had just occurred.

Assuming that the results hold weight however, they suggest that men who had the door held for them were made to feel less powerful, less in control of their actions and perhaps "feminized." If this is true, then it stands to reason that some women find the gesture implicitly offensive, even if it is not intended as such.

Some men have ceased performing the gesture out of fear that they will offend the woman in question or that the woman in question will lash out at them. There have been arguments for both sides as to whether a negative reaction to something as seemingly benign as holding a door is justified.

Interestingly, as mentioned before, the study did not find that women were affected in such a way by the gesture. Perhaps because it is so engrained in Western society that many Western women do not consider its implications. It is even possible that some women regard the gesture as a sign of respect rather than one that implies dependency and inferiority. After all, the origins of such a gesture are in showing deference to royalty.

The fact is that perhaps not every woman will be offended by such a gesture, but if it is capable of making a man feel belittled, then it is certainly capable of making a woman feel the same thing, especially being part of a historically marginalized group. The holding of a door could be the straw that breaks the camel's back in a series of micro-aggressions a woman has faced in the span of a day, a week or even years. As it always is with human beings, you have to deal with things on a case by case basis.

Ideally, it would be great if the gesture had nothing to do with gender at all — if it were just something that human beings did for each other regardless of gender. I know from personal experience if I see someone at the front of a pair or group walk through a door and let it swing shut behind them, it immediately communicates to me self-centeredness and thoughtlessness, regardless of the sex of the people involved. However, until true gender equality exists, we have to be aware that, as the researchers write, "behaviors as fleeting and seemingly innocuous as door holding can have unforeseen negative consequences.” That doesn't mean stop holding the door for women, but it means, consider why you do it, and if a woman does happen to take offense, try to consider some of the reasons why that may be before writing it off.